Vorrede, von T. Pinkus.--Sein und Bewusstsein, von G. Lukács und H.H.Holz.--Gesellschaft und Individuum, von G. Lukács und L. Kofler.--Grundlegendes zu einer wissenschaftlichen Politik, von G. Lukács und W. Abendroth.--Vorläufige Bilanz, von G. Lukács, W. Abendroth und H. H. Holz.--Bibliographie (p. 125-[128]).

1. Művészet és társadalom; válogatott esztétikai tanulmányok.--2. Világirodalom; válogatott világirodalom tanulmányok 2 v.

Using the technique of prepared questions, Conversations with Lukacs is a brilliant gathering of thoughts and insights covering topics as ontology, the techniques of manipulative societies, the pitfalls of combating Stalinism with Stalinist methods, and the problems of intellectuals in advanced capitalist societies. Above all, there is the restatement of Lukacs unshaken conviction that the working class, with all the changes that have occurred in its way of life and composition, is still the historical carrier of social transformation. Lukacs's interlocutors (...) in these four conversations are Hans Heinz Holz, Leo Kofler, and Wolfgang Abendroth. Each of them engages Lukacs in separate dialogues, on being and consciousness (Holz), on society and the individual (Kofler), and on the elements of scientific politics (Abendroth). Lukacs, Abendroth, and Holz work toward a "Provisional Summary" in the last conversation. The interlocutors and the editor write that "These conversations show very clearly the basis of abstraction in the experiences of everyday life.... This gives these conversations with Lukacs a more than anecdotal value; for the unmediated way in which thought is produced in conversation corresponds exactly to that primary level of experience, the data of everyday reality, whose theoretical value Lukacs emphasizes.... They aspire to bear witness to the living thought of one of the great men of our century, and to provide the opportunity to approach this thought by the simplest possible route.". (shrink)

In this thesis I propose an account of knowledge of one’s own mental states. My goal is set on a unified transparency account of self-knowledge. It is unified, because the proposal will account for the generation of beliefs about mental states of all types, regardless of whether they are propositional, non-propositional, experiential or non-experiential. My account will thereby be applicable to knowledge of any mental state, from beliefs and desires to fears, hopes, and sensations such as pain. Moreover, it will (...) be a transparency account because it holds on to Gareth Evans’s observation that self-ascribing mental states is done by attending outwards instead of inwards. There is a sense in which we attend to the world when we find out whether we believe something, and my proposal aims to capture this intuition. The core idea I am exploring is the following: generally, when one produces a first-order mental state, one also forms a corresponding, dispositional second-order belief about that state. Both attitudes share elements of their production, which ensures reliability while retaining fallibility. For instance, when you form a belief ‘there is a red car’ by perceiving a red car, you also generate the dispositional belief ‘I believe that there is a red car,’ if everything goes right. I argue that almost all features that make self-knowledge special can be explained with this basic idea. The assumption that the production of a first-order mental state and a second-order belief about the state go hand in hand has surprising explanatory power. Moreover, there are at least no obvious reasons why the assumption should be ruled out. The upshot will be a view that we should take seriously as a contender for an explanation of self-knowledge. I will not be able to conclusively show that it is the best explanation, but I argue that it is one worth thinking about. The thesis is structured in three parts. The first part focuses on the phenomenon of self-knowledge and the transparency idea. These chapters serve as the setup for my later proposed view. Chapter 1 and 2 discuss what exactly we want to explain when we say that we aim to explain self-knowledge. I thereby provide an overview of the conceptual landscape of self-knowledge and argue that we should understand the peculiarity of self-knowledge in terms of features of belief and belief-formation. Moreover, I commit myself to the view that the peculiarity has something to do with our cognitive access to mental states and relate that to the goal of a unified account of self-knowledge. Chapter 3 discusses how we ought to understand the other qualification of my goal: a transparency account of self-knowledge. I provide an overview of transparency accounts in the literature and lay out the path to avoid common problems of transparency accounts. In the second part I propose the single process model of self-knowledge as a unified, transparency account of self-knowledge. I provide the core principles of the view and show how it explains the features of self-knowledge I aim to explain. Chapter 4 focuses on attitudes, both propositional and non-propositional. Chapter 5 expands the view to phenomenal states, such as being in pain. The third part connects the epistemological discussion of the single process model to research on cognition. Chapter 6 proposes a cognitive story of predictive processing that is compatible with the single process model. I thereby discuss the plausibility of the predictive processing idea and its empirical support. I provide a predictive processing story of self-knowledge that fits with the single process model of self-knowledge. In chapter 7 I discuss extended mental states. Clark & Chalmers propose that at least some mental states, such as beliefs, can be extended to external devices. Given that my aim is a unified account, I ought to say something about knowledge of these extended beliefs. I argue that they cannot be known by the same processes as non-extended mental states because beliefs about extended beliefs show different features than beliefs about our non-extended states that we formed by introspection. Hence, even if my view cannot account for them this is not a problem, because they are not formed by genuine introspection. Instead, we come to know extended mental states by a distinct process that we might call extended introspection. Finally, chapter 8 provides a brief conclusion of the thesis for and points out some placed that require further development. The account is promising as an explanation of self-belief and self-knowledge, but whether it is correct also depends on future research outside the scope of philosophy. (shrink)

Sentences with disjunction in the scope of a universal quantifier, Every A is P or Q, tend to give rise to distributive inferences that each of the disjuncts holds of at least one individual in the domain of the quantifier, Some A is P & Some A is Q. These inferences are standardly derived as an entailment of the meaning of the sentence together with the scalar implicature that it is not the case that either disjunct holds of every individual (...) in the domain of the quantifier, \Every A is P &\Every A is Q. As we show, this derivation faces a challenge in that distributive inferences may obtain in the absence of plain negated inferences. We address this challenge by showing that on particular assumptions about alternatives, a derivation of distributive inferences as scalar implicatures can be maintained without in fact necessitating plain negated inferences. These assumptions accord naturally with the grammatical approach to scalar implicatures. We also present experimental data that suggest that plain negated inferences are not only unnecessary for deriving distributive inferences, but might in fact be unavailable. (shrink)

The paper claims that the rule of recognition, given the way it is presented by Hart, cannot be a constitutive rule of any legal system as a whole, but rather a constitutive rule of legal rules as elements of a legal system. Since I take the legal system to be an institutional artifact kind, I claim that, in order to account for a legal system as a whole, at least two further constitutive rules, in addition to the rule of recognition (...) as a token-element constitutive rule, are needed – one constitutive of legal officials and the other constitutive of a legal system as a token. However, given the central role the legal officials' practice occupies in establishing a particular instantiation or token of a legal system, I also claim that the rule of recognition cannot be understood as 'merely' a token-element constitutive rule but also as a legal system's implementation or concretisation rule. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to correct a widespread misconception about the work of Robert Leslie Ellis and John Venn, namely that it can be considered as the ‘British empiricist’ reaction against the traditional theory of probability. It is argued, instead, that there was no unified ‘British school’ of frequentism during the nineteenth century. Where Ellis arrived at frequentism from a metaphysical idealist transformation of probability theory’s mathematical calculations, Venn did so on the basis of an empiricist critique of (...) its ‘inverse application’. (shrink)

When does a human being cease to exist? For millennia, the answer to this question had remained largely unchanged: death had been diagnosed when heartbeat and breathing were permanently absent. Only comparatively recently, in the 1950s, rapid developments in intensive-care medicine called into question this widely accepted criterion. What had previously been deemed a permanent cessation of vital functions suddenly became reversible. -/- A new criterion of death was needed. It was suggested that the destruction of the brain could indicate (...) the death of the organism in the presence of external life support. Soon the so-called brain death became the new worldwide standard. In recent years, however, doubts about this neurological criterion have been growing. Is brain death really our death? -/- This is the question that this thesis seeks to answer. To this end, we shall connect the medical debate about the definition of death to the philosophical debate about personal identity. While we will find that the destruction of its brain does in fact not correspond to an organism’s death, we shall also ask whether the assumption that we are essentially organisms is correct. May brain death be the ceasing to exist of a different entity? -/- Substituting clinical case reports and considerations about human physiology for the use of thought experiments, the thesis takes a novel and philosophically unconventional approach to the problem of what we essentially are. We shall analyse various pathological conditions and their respective effects on the bodily and mental characteristics of our existence. We will conclude that brain death is indeed our death – but for reasons entirely different from those cited in the original justification of this criterion. (shrink)

This book provides a systematic introduction to the debate on historical emissions and climate change, for students, researchers and policymakers.

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukacs, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian antecedents in (...) the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and " The Phenomenology of Mind."" Lukacs completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work.". (shrink)

This paper addresses a theory of intergenerational justice that we refer to as “needs-based sufficientarianism”. According to needs-based sufficientarianism, the present generation ought to enable future generations to meet their basic needs — for example, their needs for drinkable water, food and health care. Our aim is to explain and defend this theory in a programmatic way. First, we introduce what we regard as the most plausible variant of needs-based sufficientarianism. Then we argue that this variant is superior to several (...) alternative ways of thinking about intergenerational justice. In particular, we defend basic needs as the currency of intergenerational justice and sufficiency as its principle. Our arguments for these claims are neither fully comprehensive nor fully conclusive. Yet, we hope that they suffice to show that needs-based sufficientarianism is a major contender, with significant pro tanto advantages over other views. (shrink)

This volume investigates the cut-up as a contemporary mode of creativity and important global model of cultural production. The term cut-up serves as an open container for a long list of terms and actions that describe the combination and reassembly of existing motifs, fragments, images, and ideas from diverse and disconnected origins into newly synthesized entities. Refusing any disciplinary coherence, this book assembles texts from multifarious eras and origins. At the same time, the contributors share an urgency to question the (...) dichotomy of original creation and derivative appropriation. In this way the book itself is a cut-up of previously published essays and articles that in their proximity allow for multiple readings to arise. It aims to translate the topic into a wider societal discourse to serve as both a source of inspiration and a platform for critical reflection. (shrink)

[Sight Darting Forth from the Eyes: 13th-Century Franciscans and Augustine’s Authority in the Issue of Extramissionist Theory of Vision] One of the positions sometimes ascribed to Augustine is the so-called extramissionist conception of vision, i.e. the assumption that the sight is effectuated by something being sent out from the eyes, as opposed to more intuitive receptionist understanding of sight. The paper investigates the attitudes of eleven 13th-century Franciscan thinkers (from Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle in 1230s to (...) Roger Marston and Peter of England in 1280s) to this philosophical problem and Augustine’s authority in this issue. It is demonstrated that whereas the earliest generation of Franciscan thinkers does not conceptualise the issue at all, accepting rather Aristotelian receptionist account at face value, the later Franciscans (such as Roger Bacon) try to the reconcile both positions, which is, in turn, abandoned by the next generation (e.g., Peter of England). The unique example of paying tribute to Augustine without renouncing the philosophical scrutiny is Peter Olivi, who reformulates extramission into a more plausible account of the role of attention in the visual perception. (shrink)

Gerechtigkeit wird oft durch Gleichheit bestimmt. Um Gleichheit herzustellen, muss verglichen werden. Durch beliebige Vergleiche aber kann jedes gerecht erscheinendes Verhältnis in Ungerechtigkeit kippen. Dieser Widerspruch muss in einer Gerechtigkeitskonzeption gelöst werden. Das Buch entwickelt in Auseinandersetzung mit Aristoteles, Rawls und Sen ein Gerechtigkeitskriterium gleicher Berücksichtigung aller in einem gemeinsamen Raum der Anwesenheit. Dabei wird der Begriff der Anwesenheit religionsphilosophisch bestimmt. An diesem Kriterium werden vier ökonomische Klassiker auf ihre wirtschaftsethischen Grundlagen überprüft (Smith, Marx, Friedman, Piketty). Auch ohne zu vergleichen, (...) lassen sich die Verteilungsprobleme wirtschaftlicher Güter und Lasten identifizieren und gerecht lösen"-- Back cover. (shrink)

The distribution of the focus particle even is constrained: if it is adjoined at surface structure to an expression that is entailed by its focus alternatives, as in even once, it must be appropriately embedded to be acceptable. This paper focuses on the context-dependent distribution of such occurrences of even in the scope of non-monotone quantifiers. We show that it is explained on the assumption that even can move at LF Syntax and semantics, 1979). The analysis is subsequently extended to (...) occurrences of negative polarity items in these environments, which mirror the abovementioned distribution of even and which invalidate standard characterizations of NPI licensing conditions in terms of downward-entailingness. The idea behind the extension is that NPIs denote weak elements that are associates of covert even. The paper concludes by discussing two comprehensive theories of NPI licensing and how our proposal relates to them. (shrink)

Centre and Periphery in the Historiography of Philosophy: Peter Olivi and Medieval Psychology The paper inquiries into the (historiographical) question what does it mean to be a “marginal thinker” in the context of the medieval philosophy. The question is investigated on the example of Franciscan philosopher and theologian Peter Olivi (1248/49–1298) and his philosophical psychology. First, a preliminary option is introduced: for a thinker, being “marginal” depends on his relation to who is considered to be canonical. Since the most famous (...) thinker of the Middle Ages is Thomas Aquinas (at least according to the traditional canon of medieval philosophy), Olivi’s positions in psychology are compared with these of Aquinas. It is revealed that Olivi’s psychology is very different from the Aquinas’ one. (E.g. Olivi stresses the activity of perception, proprioceptual nature of the sense of touch, and direct access of the intellect to its own acts.) Moreover, Olivi is very critical towards the Aristotelian philosophy as is done by some thinkers of his time. Nevertheless, it does not follow that Olivi is a marginal thinker only because of his dissimilarity from the more Aristotelian-minded ones. It is argued that “centre” and “periphery” in the history of medieval philosophy depends not on the canon (which is rather a historians’ construct and instrument), but rather on the tradition. Hence, although Olivi can be considered as a marginal thinker if we take into the account the Aristotelian tradition of medieval philosophy, he is definitely a central and important thinker, if considered as a member of the Augustinian tradition. (shrink)

[What is the Human Being? Peter Auriol and the Role of Cognitive Psychology in the Medieval Definition of the Human Being: ] This paper explores how medieval philosophers used cognitive psychology in defining what the human being is, paying special attention to the Franciscan thinker Peter Auriol (c. 1280 – 1322). First, I examine the motivations of Auriol’s claim that the property of being alive is bound to the property of being cognitive (i. e. being capable of cognition). Then, the (...) foundations of medieval faculty psychology and Auriol’s conception of cognition are introduced. I also argue that the emphasis which Auriol puts on the activity of soul’s faculties leads him to the conclusion (unusual in his days) that the distinction among these faculties is established from the first person perspective. Finally, Auriol’s cognitive definition of the human being is introduced – human beings are human beings precisely because their cognitive experience differs from the way the cognition works in animals on the one hand and in God on the other hand. Whereas animals have only sensory soul’s faculties, humans have the intellect in addition and, therefore, they are capable of universal cognition. Moreover, since humans have not only intellect but also the inner senses (particularly, the phantasy), the universals appear to the human intellect only as blended with the individual that the universal was abstracted from, and the human intellect is not capable of paying attention to no more than just one object at the same moment. Since God and angels have only intellect, these distinctively human features are absent from their cognitive experience. (shrink)

Machine intelligence already helps medical staff with a number of tasks. Ethical decision-making, however, has not been handed over to computers. In this proof-of-concept study, we show how an algorithm based on Beauchamp and Childress’ prima-facie principles could be employed to advise on a range of moral dilemma situations that occur in medical institutions. We explain why we chose fuzzy cognitive maps to set up the advisory system and how we utilized machine learning to train it. We report on the (...) difficult task of operationalizing the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and patient autonomy, and describe how we selected suitable input parameters that we extracted from a training dataset of clinical cases. The first performance results are promising, but an algorithmic approach to ethics also comes with several weaknesses and limitations. Should one really entrust the sensitive domain of clinical ethics to machine intelligence? (shrink)

The paper presents the logical milieu of the Paradox of ravens, identified by Hempel in his Studies in the Logic of Confirmation. It deals with Hempel’s interpretations of Nicod’s criterion of confirmation as well as with its inadmissible consequences. I, subsequently, suggest an epistemological and semantic specification of empirical properties, i.e., of their identity; then I formulate a criterion of the test of properties expressed by empirical hypothesis. Finally, I propose a procedural conception of confirmation by means of the testing (...) procedure schema. The confirmation is, therefore, conceived as an attribute which can be ascribed to a hypothesis through the process of its testing. The methods of testing are central to the hypothesis’s qualifica-tion as confirmed. (shrink)

Knjiga jednoga od vodećih suvremenih talijanskih filozofa Giannija Vattima, Ecce komun, s podnaslovom Kako se novo-postaje ono što se bilo, značajna je iz nekoliko razloga. Prvi od njih leži u lucidnoj analizi tzv. »krize demokracije«, njenih institucija, te općenito predstavničkih tijela demokratskog političkog sistema. Povrh toga, ona ukazuje na krizu kapitalizma, koji nije u stanju smanjiti sve veće ekonomske razlike te čiji se razvoj pokazuje ekološki neodrživim. Osobito drugi dio knjige, prikazuje razvoj Vattimovih teoretskih promišljanja i posljedice tog razvoja na (...) njegove praktičko-političke stavove. Djelo ukazuje na ono što je novo u njegovu promišljanju, ali istovremeno i kako su te nove postavke i zaključci proizašli iz dosadašnjeg filozofskog puta autora. Konkretno djelo ukazuje kako promišljanje slabe misli, kritike apsolutnih vrijednosti, u ovom povijesnom trenutku nužno vodi zaključku da treba postati komunist. Isto tako na pitanje zašto čitati Ecce komun moglo bi se odgovoriti: zato da bi se u potpunosti shvatile ne samo praktično-teoretske implikacije Vattimove misli već i njezin razvojni put, pa utoliko i njezine osnove.This article examines Gianni Vattimo’s book-cum-political autobiography Ecce comu. Come si diventa ciò che si era . The principle value of this work lies in its discussion of the current political and theoretical position of the father of weak thought in relation to developments in his philosophical thought and his personal life. Vattimo’s position has been directly influenced by the concrete historical moment of widening economical differences and dominant “economicism”. More than any other previous work, in this book Vattimo calls for the need to think a communist ideal. With regard to the question over whether it is possible to be a communist today, Vattimo responds that not only is it a possibility but an imperative. In other words, if post-metaphysical philosophy of the present world intends to remain non-dogmatic, it must rediscover an anarchistic, libertarian and anti-totalitarian communism. Consequently, one of the goals of this paper is to explore what Vattimo means by being a Communist and his idea of Communism. The paper demonstrates that the Communism Vattimo has in mind is not a model of a perfect society but an ideal to follow in order to realize a truly democratic society. (shrink)